‘Yes. The name worried me. Then in Tripoli I saw a newspaper headline about his father. In Captain Asab’s office, actually. I got Wilkins to check. Dawson isn’t interested in politics. He’s an oil geologist or whatever you call it and he was employed by an oil exploration company in Libya. It had been in the press at some time.’
‘Why didn’t you come to me with the information you had about the Villa La Sunata? We could have had Dawson back home by now.’
‘I didn’t know about the villa when I met you. And you made it clear you needed no help from me. When I did know . . . well, let’s say I was silent out of pique, or vanity—’
‘Not cupidity?’
‘I’ve often wondered if that word had anything to do with cupid.’
He got up slowly and came towards me.
‘It has. From the Latin cupere, desire. It’s a capsule description of your basic motives—money and sex.’
‘So, I suffer from a common disease.’
‘How much did Saraband Two say would be put in your bank account?’
‘Five thousand pounds. But it was Duchêne who said it. I refused.’
‘Sure it wasn’t fifty thousand—and you haven’t refused?’
Light dawned.
‘You think I’m in on this job?’
He reached down and got me by the shirt front. He was nothing like as big as Perkins. He wasn’t much bigger than me. But I was moved, jerked up, swung round and then thrown to slam up against a wall, my head thudding against it. I lay where I had fallen.
‘That’s what we think,’ he said. ‘We’re just waiting for you to confirm it.’
He moved to the door, paused by it, and said, ‘By the way, there’s nothing personal in my actions. I just want you in the right frame of mind.’
‘That’s what Paulet said. Thanks. It’s nice to know this isn’t going to spoil a beautiful friendship.’
He went out. I went back to the bunk. In the next hour they rang the changes between equatorial and arctic temperatures until my body responses would have sent a Pavlov off his head with delight. I swear to God they got me so mixed up that sometimes I sweated when it was freezing and shivered when the place was like a bakehouse.
Then Perkins came, big, bluff and genial.
He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the table.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘just tell your story from start to finish—and omit nothing.’
I told him. It took quite a while, and when I had finished he said, ‘That’s all?’
‘Yes.’
He shook his head.
‘Jane Judd visited you because she was worried about Freeman and wanted to know if you knew what was happening?’
‘Yes. And I told her I didn’t know what it was all about.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us about the postcard you took from her bag?’
While I was down here they were obviously doing some fast checking outside.
‘I didn’t think it was important. You don’t want Freeman. You want Dawson. They won’t be in the same place. Freeman and Pelegrina have sold out to the K.G.B. boys.’
He moved fast and sledge-hammered me on the chin with his right fist. I went to the floor and stayed there.
He went to the door.
‘Think the story over again and try to remember all the details.’ He went out. I got up. The temperature changes started again and this time went on for two hours. I thought over the details between shivering with heat and sweating with cold. Surely, I told myself, a man must be allowed to retain something, just something, which he could use in a cupere way.
The next time it was Sutcliffe. He had changed into a neat blue suit and wore his Old Etonian tie. He sat on the kitchen chair and pouted his plump little lips at me.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I will now tell you my story from start to finish—and omit nothing.’
‘Good.’
I went to the little washbasin to get a drink.
He said, ‘The water’s cut off. It won’t come on again for some time.’
I told my story with a dry mouth. When I had finished, he said, ‘That’s all?’
‘Yes.’
He said, ‘You were at Gloriana Stankowski’s yesterday evening?’
‘Is it tomorrow already?’ I looked at my watch. It was.
‘She told you that she had received anonymously ten thousand pounds in notes from Freeman. Why haven’t you mentioned that?’
‘Because you bloody well already know.’ I could afford to lose my temper with him. At least he wouldn’t try any strong-arm stuff on me. ‘You’ve got a Treasury hyena on her tail and he knows.’ Sutcliffe shook his head. ‘You must try and understand. When we ask you for your full story we mean the full story—even if some details of it are already known to us.’ He stood up. ‘By the way, I made a mistake about the water not being on. You can have a drink if you wish.’
I went to the basin, grabbed a glass—plastic—and held it under the tap. As my right hand closed over the metal tap to turn it I got a shock up my arm that jolted me three feet backwards. I lay on the floor and wasn’t aware of Sutcliffe going out.
When I found the strength to get up I flopped on to the bunk.
For the next three hours I did the arctic-tropical trip so many times that I lost count. But that didn’t matter. From the moment of Sutcliife’s going a brass band had started to play over the loudspeaker. It was a good band—mad about Sousa—and played at top volume for the full three hours. Heat, cold and sound. Simple little things. They kept them going. I slowly began to go mad. I put it off for a while by chewing up medicated toilet paper from the loo and wadding the wet pads into my ears. They finished the recital with ‘Sussex by the Sea’, and then a slow funeral march.
I lay on the bunk like a piece of chewed string.
Manston and Perkins came in together and propped me up.
‘Shall we,’ said Perkins,
